Ok, well I won't be online for awhile, so I won't leave you all dying in suspense any longer.

Basically if you slow down and think about the hand for a while, which I didn't (again I'm in deer-in-the-headlights mode at this point) you come to an interesting conclusion. At first glance no A on the flop seems good for me. Now she goes all-in immediately. What to make of this? I'm thinking not much. Lots of people might try to throw out a bluff here with half their chips in the pot, hoping the flop missed me as well. Certainly there's a chance she's betting because the flop hit her hand, but seems like there's a decent chance she'd be betting either way.

So let's go back to the preflop betting. She raised to $100, I re-raised to $300, she re-re-raised to $500. What kind of hands would merit this second raise? Consider she has no read on me whatsoever, except that I raised her to 30% of my stake on the third hand. She could be a maniac, an idiot, late for a dinner date, or a pro trying some move I can't comprehend. But I just saw her play and win a $40 satellite to get into this tourney, which would seem to make the first 3 possibilities very unlikely, and let's just not kill ourselves worrying about the 4th. So, I would say realistically the most likely scenario for that kind of preflop action from her would be AA-JJ, AK, or maybe AQ, AJs, TT. But those last three seem pretty iffy. So let's knock out AJs, TT, and AQos. Now given the board and my hand, KK and QQ seem pretty unlikely. One would be very bad for me, the other neutral. So lets put her mostly likely hands on AK, AQs, AA or JJ. 3 of those are very bad for me given the flop of QQJ. One is good, although I could still get drawn out on.

So really if you stop and think about it, most likeley scenario is I'm beat here, even though no A came on the flop. Naturally I didn't think about it, and called. She turned over JJ and her FH held up.

All in all a very interesting hand I think. There was some post-discussion at the table as I made my ignominious exit, with everyone pretty much agreeing I was screwed from the time the cards were shuffled, as even an all-in preflop probably wouldn't have pushed her out. But actually, once I made the miscalculation of just calling preflop, I did have a chance to get away from the hand with half my chips. And I think it's certainly conceivable that a lot of solid, aggressive players still wouldn't necessarily want to risk all their chips, preflop, on the third hand of a major tournament, even if in their gut they think it's the right play. So I don't think this scenario is something that could never come up in a big-time arena.

The question for you pros is this: Do you think you could have/would have gotten away from this hand postflop, assuming for whatever reason you played it the same as me to that point?

I'd really love to hear some honest assessments of what you think you would have done. My home-game buddies were unanimous agreement that there's no way I could have reasonably folded that hand. But I don't know. I'm wondering if this is the kind of hand that separates the Eagles from the Lions (per Helmuth's poker animals). I'll say this, if it ever happens again... I'll go all in preflop and still lose. But at least I'll get a lot more sympathy that way. Woo hoo.

-Matt